Harvesting time is the busiest period in the Russian agrarian region and it lasts just for a month or so. Once the crops are ripe, they have just 20 days to harvest it or 30 days if they have a special grain drier. The fields are enormous, but as the schedule is tight, hundreds of combines work in fields day and night, processing 6 square kilometers of area per shift, each of them

harvesting 130-160 tones of grain daily. A combine operator gets $1.300 thousand salary a month on the average, and as the work is seasonal he doesn’t earn anything the rest of the year. Each of the working vehicles has air conditioning systems, and with the temperature going above 90 degrees Fahrenheit sitting in the cabin is like sitting in hell.

Russian just married couples assumed a long-standing tradition of Italian weddings. They like to hang little or not so little padlocks on bridges as a symbol of their future long and stable married life. If it yet to be figured out if this really helps in preventing cheating or family tiffs, but the couples seem never to stop attaching steal pieces with their names on to the railing of Luzkov bridge, making it look like an ugly sculpture of vain hopes. The Moscow city authorities even set up there a big iron tree, where the happy newly-fledged wives and husbands are to hand their locks (to be totally honest, this pile of garbage on

a stem can scare anyone of any age who sees it). Still, this tree is not as popular as the railing, and two enthusiastic volunteers made up to do things right and remove everything that was sticking out from the bridge railings and had romantic inscriptions. The guys dressed as utility workers waited for wedding processions appear on the bridge and began to cut off the locks in front of shocked brides. 67 trophies and a lot more to return for – that was the result of their hard work. “I wouldn't mess with someone carrying a bolt cutter!", told one of the tough guys. Would you?

Larisa Churkina makes dolls, which look as real as if they were living beings, and her awesome creations are definitely not for playing. She has a number of exhibitions and also works as a theatre doll creator, but she also creates her dolls for private collections, and any of who wants it can contact her and ask to make a portrait in a miniature. That is not cheap, $2,000 on the

average, but what you get can never be compared to money you pay. Her little figures seem to be totally alive and eager to move, but for some unknown reason they are frozen in papier-mâché, waiting for someone who sets them free. These are not dolls, these are real people shrunk to mini-size. There must have been some of David Blaine’s magic.

The main problem of drivers in any big city including Moscow is where to park, especially when you are in the centre and there seems to be no free lots for a few decades more. In Europe there are loads of parking paid space, and they even have special buildings just for autos. But here in Russian that’s

not a tradition yet, though, it really should be. One way of solving the problem is constructing multistory automated parking garages, and Muscovites are about to make these glass buildings widely spread (of course, if they will manage to save up money enough to cover enormous expenses).

Russian "Sayano-Shushenskoe" (yep it's hard to read name) hydro electric power plant is the biggest hydro power plant in Russia, and the biggest (in terms of production) electric generating unit in Russia. It's power output exceeds 6400 Megawatts and is in the Guinness records book. Now, today messages started arriving about a huge explosion on the site. Later, those were confirmed by some official media though according to the

witnesses they underestimate the damage. Here we have the fresh shots from the territory surrounded by emergency services. They tell that eleven people died and fifty-six are missing. The signs of panic appeared among locals from the surrounding villages and towns. They fear that in case of further damage the dam could let the water freely go thus meaning that thousand of houses would be flooded.

Yesterday, on Sunday, August 16, two greatest Russian Sukhoi Su-27 planes crashed while doing training exercises over a cottage village. One of the planes stuck into a house like a knife into butter, the second one was led out of the village and fell on the wasteland. One of the pilots died, the two others were saved. The

local people weren’t killed, but the owners of the destroyed house got badly injured with burning fuel from the plane and were immediately taken to hospital. Now the cause of the catastrophe remains unclear, but on the eyewitness account this all could happen because of a bird stuck in the engine.

After the Sec­ond World War in Italy the car­mak­ers realised that it would be a long time before every­one who needed a car would be able to afford one. So the smart Ital­ians switched to design­ing and pro­duc­ing motor scoot­ers: these light, afford­able, ergonomic Ves­pas, a low cost prod­uct avail­able to everybody. Need­less to say, Vespa was the brand of the time (and arguably still is) and it grew more and more pop­u­lar across Europe, until, in

early 1950s, it reached the USSR. All of a sud­den this youth­ful and cheery means of trans­porta­tion coin­cided with the Khrushchev Thaw and it was decided to launch the Soviet line of motor scoot­ers. Machin­ery wise, it was viable: since the war times, a few fac­to­ries had been idle, so it was only a mat­ter of design. Mod­ern girl with a vin­tage scooter. She is prob­a­bly gloomy over the petrol price.